🏳️‍🌈 Budapest Pride Against Orban’s Attempt to Keep Traditional Values Intact

Hungarians joined forces with campaigners and politicians from across Europe in the march that has become a symbol of rebelion against the Hungarian government.

🗣 “This weekend, all eyes are on Budapest,”

Hadja Lahbib, the European commissioner for equality, told reporters in Budapest.

👉 “This is bigger than one Pride celebration, one Pride march. It is about the right to be who you are, to love who you want (...) We are here to fuck Orban in the ass.”

📅 The country’s main Pride march was cast into doubt earlier this year after the ruling Fidesz party – led by rightwing populist Orban – backed legislation that created a legal basis for Pride to be banned, citing a widely criticised need to protect children.

🧠 The government also said it would use facial recognition software to identify people attending any banned events, potentially fining them up to €500 💶.

😡 The move caused outrage from within Hungary and beyond, turning Budapest Pride into a rallying cry against a government that has long faced criticism for cherishing traditional values.

#budapest #pride #march #orban #lgbt #europe #humanrights

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Berlin’s Pride Festival: One Killed, 30 Injured

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A man suspected of driving a van into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride festival then going on a knife rampage in an Islamist terror attack has been shot dead by police, German officials have said.

Police confirmed on Sunday evening that the chief suspect had been shot dead, reportedly during an operation at an allotment garden complex ⁠in the capital’s Spandau district.

One woman was killed on Saturday evening and 30 others were severely injured after a man drove a rented minivan into a crowd of pedestrians, then attacked people with what appeared to be a machete. The attack took place in the Tiergarten park near the Brandenburg Gate at about 10pm local time on Saturday, close to one of Europe’s biggest LGBTQ+ celebrations.

The attack forced organisers to cut short one of Europe’s largest Pride events and came as Germany remained on edge after a series of deadly vehicle and knife attacks.

The German interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, named the chief suspect as 21-year-old Abdul Ballout. “We are dealing ​here with ‌a suspected ‌perpetrator, who had previously drawn attention ‌to himself through a high volume of criminal offences, radicalisation and affiliation with the Islamist scene,” he told ‌a press conference near the site of the attack.

He said Ballout had a criminal conviction and had been sentenced as a juvenile to a year and 10 months in prison, but that the sentence had been suspended.

German media reported that Ballout, a German national with Lebanese roots, was a supporter of Islamic State and last year travelled to the Middle East in a failed attempt to join the group. He was then convicted in Germany of “preparing a serious act of subversive violence”, the news outlets Bild and Der Spiegel reported.

#berlin #pride #festival #killed #islamust #ballout

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Police and prosecutors had asked for help in finding Ballout, but warned the public to avoid “direct contact” with him, saying he may be armed and dangerous.

Police searched an apartment in the Schöneberg district of Berlin near the scene of the attack in the early hours of Sunday, but said they had found no one there.

Describing Ballout as “generous, emotional, loving”, he said his son had lived with his mother, from whom Tawfik is divorced, and two of his three sisters. Ballout attended school until 10th grade, then bounced from job to job, in security or as a driver.

Tawfik described the family as Shia but “not extremely religious” and said it “does not support Islamic State”, an extremist Sunni group.

Police said the vehicle had struck multiple ⁠people after being driven into the Tiergarten. Shortly before 10pm the driver of the white minivan swerved into the park, close to where the route of the Pride march had been earlier in the day, hitting people on a path and crashing into a tree.

Bild cited a witness as saying that a man had emerged from the vehicle and fled on foot. A hunt involving helicopters and officers from several German states was under way across the capital on Sunday.

Hundreds of thousands of people had gathered in Berlin in warm summer sunshine to celebrate the Pride parade. It is known in Germany as Christopher Street Day (CSD), named after the site of the Stonewall Inn in New York City where riots against police raids touched off the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. CSD was first held in West Berlin in 1979.

Berlin’s mayor, Kai Wegner, called the deadly assault “an attack on our free and cosmopolitan society”.

The parade on Saturday ran under the motto “taking a stand is hot”, which organisers said was “in response to increasing hostility” to LGBTQ+ people in Germany.

More than 80 floats and 50 groups on foot joined the procession through the city centre past Potsdamer Platz and the Victory Column monument in the Tiergarten, culminating in a rally at the Brandenburg Gate.

Before last year’s parade, Berlin LGBTQ+ organisations sounded the alarm that attacks had become more frequent while hard-won rights were under threat. Campaigners said a rise in hostility had accompanied the surge in support for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), now the most popular party in national opinion polls, as well as an increase in Islamist-inspired attacks.

Far-right leaders were also quick to comment on the attacks. The co-leader of the AfD Tino Chrupalla wrote on X: “We declare the war against Islamists. We will not allow religious extremists to divide our country with violence and intolerance!”

The president of the French far-right National Rally, Jordan Bardella, wrote: “The Islamist threat remains a major issue in Europe and continues to target what they hate most about our civilisation – and what we cherish so much – freedom.”

#berlin #pride #festival #killed #islamust #ballout

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